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Homemade Nutella | Gluten & Dairy Free

Dear Nutella,

I want to put you on everything ever. You make me think that midnight snacks are a good idea. I’ve eaten too much toast in the past couple of days, mostly because it’s a vehicle to get you in my mouth. You also really shine paired with apples. Is it too forward to tell you that I actually ate a straight spoonful of you one afternoon? Forget it, I don’t care who knows it. I love you. Let’s make-out.

Faithfully yours,

Gina

Do you think I am coming on too strong? Maybe.

Well, Friends…HAPPY WORLD NUTELLA DAY! Yes, that’s a thing. I only learned about it this morning. If you want we can just ignore that this is purely dumb luck and high-five instead.

Dumb luck or not, this recipe is a gem. I’ve been wanting to make a simple homemade Nutella recipe for some time. When I came across this recipe over at the Spunky Coconut, I knew I had to try it. It was made dairy-free by using coconut milk and the super sweet milk chocolate was subbed out for sexy dark chocolate. If you haven’t noticed I am a sucker for dark chocolate and coconut together. I’ve made a tart, some donuts and some totally loaded oatmeal cookies that all have this fancy pairing. Did I mention my chocolate chia pudding? Yup. I am a fan of this flavor marriage. As soon as I found this recipe I got to work and made some Nutella magic happen.

The ingredients are simple. A can of coconut milk, 10 ounces of dark chocolate, and salt. We use coconut sugar in this recipe which is much lower on the glycemic index than regular sugar and does not spike your blood sugar as easily. And, of course, let’s not forget our hazelnuts!

These beauties are put into the oven to roast and then after they are all nice and toasty, you taken them our and remove their skins. Take a clean kitchen towel and make it slightly damp. Place all of your hazelnuts into the cloth and gently rub until all of the skins start to come off. It takes a few minutes to remove all of the skins. If you are like me you will set this towel aside and forget that it contains lots and lots of hazelnut skins. When you pick it up all of those hazelnut skins will fall all over your kitchen floor and counters. Don’t be like me.

Coconut milk and coconut sugar become one when you heat them up together. Chocolate gets melted down in a double boiler. All of these ingredients go into a food processor. Magic happens. If you are like me you will miss the mark just a little bit while pouring your chocolate into the food processor. You will have a slick of chocolate on your counter tops You will let it dry a little bit so that it gets into your grout. When you go to clean if up it will get on your arms and somehow into your hair and on your face. This can all be avoided if you do not get distracted by episodes of MTV’s Catfish in the background while trying to expertly pour melted chocolate into a food processor. Once again, don’t be like me. However, can we all just talk about Catfish for a minute?! Are you obsessed with it? I am. I could really get carried away and talk about it for a long time…However, I will respect that you came here to hear about Nutella.

Once it’s all blended together you can bottle it up! My yield was approximately 1.5 pints! And yes, I did manage to make another unsightly mess as I was putting my Nutella into mason jars. If you are a coordinated person, you might be able to get your Nutella cleanly from the food processor and into a jar. If you are me, you got a lot of it on the counters, some of it on your sweater and a healthy blob of it on your cell phone. Why was my cell phone in the kitchen? Good question. I got carried away and tried to make a 6 second video of this whole Nutella process on Vine. The artistic value of that video (low) was not worth having to scrape chocolate and hazelnut spread off of my protective screen. Lesson learned. I am sure I will learn this lesson again. I tend to do that. So, here is an insider tip: if you get to this part of the Nutella process and you cannot be trusted to freely pour your Nutella from the food processor into a jar and you do not happen to have a wide mouth canning funnel on hand, make sure to transfer your Nutella into a large measuring cup or something with a spout that will pour cleanly into a jar. You are welcome.

Once it is done, I suggest that you eat it in large quantities with everything…or you know, in moderation. Whatever you’re into.

Wishing you the best darn World Nutella Day ever. Chocolate covered high fives all around!

Instructions

Put your raw hazelnuts on a baking sheet and spread them out evenly. Allow them to toast in the oven for 10-15 minutes. They are done when the shells are lightly toasted and they become fragrant.

While your hazelnuts are toasting take out a medium sized pot and heat up the coconut milk, coconut sugar and salt. Stir over medium heat until the coconut sugar has fully dissolved into the coconut milk. Set aside.

In a double boiler melt your dark chocolate. If you do not have a double boiled you can make your own with two pots that fit cleanly into one another. Once your chocolate is totally melted, set aside.

After your hazelnuts are done, remove them from the oven.Dampen a clean dish towel and place your toasted hazelnuts inside.

Gently rub the hazelnuts to remove as much of the skin as possible. This may take a couple of minutes.

Once you have removed as much of the hazelnut skins as possible, add your hazelnuts to your food processor.

Process your hazelnuts until they become a very fine meal.

Add your melted chocolate and process again until it becomes smooth.

Once your chocolate is incorporated, add in your coconut milk and sugar mixture and process again until it is completely smooth and the texture of Nutella.

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Absolutely the most delicious thing I have ever made! Thank you for the recipe! But, I have to say, to peel the hazelnuts is supposed to take only takes “a couple of minutes”? Make that 30! And a sore thumb!!!!! Still – -all worth it!!!

Wonderful recipe! I have all the ingredients! Yey! I also have 2 large bottles of store bought Nutella… What should I do? Eat the store bought one now in one go and make yours? Or vice versa? 🙂 Anyways, I am saving this link and will certainly be back here for the exact measurements and directions. Thanks for sharing!

Hey, at least you HAVE a protective screen on your phone. I would have had Nutella in strange cracks and places in my phone that would only conveniently reveal themselves when trying to place phone calls.

Oh my…. Saw this in a pin on Pinterest…. Can I give you a hug?? (((HUG))) My four girls and I are celiac so we eat gluten free and a few of us have a dairy allergy on top of that. I was unfortunate to become addicted to nutella BEFORE I found out dairy was what makes my tummy angry. So you can imagine my happiness right now! Thank you for posting this! 🙂

Hey Jami! I can’t really detect TOO much coconut in it, but then again I love coconut! I would say if you absolutely despise coconut than it probably isn’t the right spread for you. You could probably swap it out for whole milk or even low fat milk if you don’t have a dairy intolerance. As far as keeping in the fridge, I haven’t encountered any problems so far and we are on week two. I expect it to last for at least a month or so in an airtight container such as a mason jar.

Now that it is the end of March, how long did your homemade Nutella last? Is this something that could be canned in Mason jars and put up in the pantry for later? This looks like something I could team up with my sister and make as gifts.

So, umm, I’m fairly positive we’d be BFFs in the kitchen because all of the mess you made here while making the Nutella? Yeah, I’ve done that, too. And I get easily distracted, too, especially since our kitchen and living room are open, and I can watch TV while cooking. (Heaven forbid I actually get things done and not be distracted!)

I’ve never tried coconut milk OR sugar before, so I’m definitely giving this recipe a shot. Thanks for sharing, lady! I hope your kitchen cleaned up all right.

Hey Lady-cat! Haha! I have an open kitchen/living room situation too and it gets me in trouble every time. You think I would learn my lesson… I do, OVER AND OVER again. Yeah, we would make a hot mess kitchen team! If you lived closer I would totally invite you over to come help me make a mess!! 🙂

Glad I’m not the only one who experiences that… and I’m the same way. If only I would learn my lesson… or when I’m not watching TV from the kitchen, at least stop singing so loudly along to the musical soundtracks playing on my computer and getting distracted by that.

It’s a shame that we can’t team up in our hot mess-y-ness in the kitchen. It could be super fun. Now, if only Texas and California were closer…

Oh lady…. this is going to make me want Nutella even more than I already do! With “healthy” homemade ingredients too! It’s very easy to get fresh coconut cream and sugar here. I might need to block out my memory of this.

I am just like you (er. worse, I think) in the kitchen 🙂 There is no telling what I would overlook at times. Anyway, the nutella sounds so yummy. Wish I could get some hazelnuts here – Well, we do get them – But they are terribly expensive 🙁 Love the pics too 🙂

Oh my gosh! This is an AMAZING recipe. My dad has recently become obsessed with dairy-free alternative, so this is just spiffing. And also, hi five for being named Gina and being infatuated with nutella, like myself…

All three of my guys (2 little and Papa) love love love Nutella on toast, or “Schokoladebrot” as we call it, because Papa is Austrian. (I’m Caribbean, and we have two little Austro-Caribbean boys in the house.) I am making this right now for my littlest boy (5 years old) who we have learned cannot tolerate dairy. His face is raw because he just had to have some Nutella this week and has had a bad skin reaction to it. He is happy that he’s going to be able to eat Schokolade again – I only hope he likes this version. I’m trying it over other recipes I’ve found online for dairy-free Nutella substitutes ’cause we have a Trader Joe’s right not far away and they have all the ingredients right there. (Probably I should’ve posted after I made it and let him try it, but I don’t have that much restraint.) I actually don’t much like chocolate, but I’m a nice lady so please forgive the genetic flaw that made me like vanilla better.

Bless you, my Dears! First tried Nutella in Europe 12 years ago. Was thrilled to see it on store shelves here. Then..saw it was made with palm oil! No sale! ( Not that deliberately killing myself with foods that are bad for me). Now you’ve given me the means by which I can indulge my love of hazelnuts and chocolate. Can’t wait to buy the ingredients!

I’m loving this! I’m thinking of making a mega-batch, canning them in mason jars, and giving them out as favors at my wedding (Spread the love hahahaha) but I was wondering…. How long will they last (expiration)? Thank you for the yummy advice!

Hi Kristin! Sounds like one heck of a yummy gift + I heart the pun #obviously. My nutella lasted for a few months in the fridge. I didn’t seal it though in any sort of canning process, so I am not sure if that might prolong it’s shelf life.

Hi, Quick question…how much cocoa powder could I use instead of dark chocolate? I can’t have any dairy and dark chocolate does tend to have dairy in it (at least all the brands in Australia do) and I miss Nutella so much!

Totally empathize with almost all Aussie chocolate having milk/milk solids in it =( . Have you found an alternative yet? I am keen to try this recipe but not so keen about the lactose content. Hope you are keeping well in the summer heat! Trish

Hi, thanks so much for this recipe! I just tried making it and it mostly turned out alright!

Couple of comments/questions: 1) I found the coconut sugar amount was not enough. The bitterness of the chocolate still came through quite well. I had to add about 3/4 cups of extra white sugar while I was mixing everything together to give it the same sweetness as real Nutella. I think in the future, it might be easier/better to use semi-sweet chocolate. 2) No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get the hazelnut blitzed fine enough with the food processor. It made the end result a bit grainy. Real Nutella is really smooth. Is there a way to pulverize the hazelnut to the point of being almost like flour?

Anyhow, I even bought a real Nutella container, emptied the real Nutella out (into another container, of course!) and filled it with this recipe 😀 I’m going to give it to my lactose and gluten intolerant GF and hope she likes it! Thanks again!

Scrumptious ! I love your recipe thank you. I added a short cut that worked well. Dissolve coconut sugar in the coconut milk, then I heated it until nearly boiling, I removed from the heat then added the chocolate, broken into squares. It dissolved with a minutes stirring. My food processer is broken so I ground the nuts in a mini processer/stick blender attachment , then put them and the choc mixture into a big jug and used my stick blender, it is as smooth as a baby’s bottom. I tasted it and added 2 tablespoons of raw honey. I just wanted a touch more sweetness which is probably due to me using 85% chocolate. To remove the nut skin, make a pocket in a clean tea towel, fold over the hot nuts and rub down hard on the tea towel on the bench. It shoudl only take 30-60 seconds if you have roasted them enough. Take the hazelnuts off the towel, take the towel outside then shake to remove skins easily ( just check wind direction first)

Hi, this is the first time I have been on your blog. My grandaughter simply loves Nutella, so I am going to try this for her. I have to admit that I have never tried this spread, but she gets it from my mom, her great grandmother. I thought Nutella was a milk chocolate spread? Just asking, no experience with it. You are funny when talking about your messy cooking. I tend to make plenty of them, even when I am trying to be neat!

Oh my goodness, thank you! My wee mum found out a few years ago that she was lactose intollerant and she was the biggest chocaholic, like me before she had to give up a lot of it. I’ll be making this recipe as part of her christmas pressie. You’re an angel xxx

Hey Vivian. I have never tested it with another type of milk. The reason I chose coconut was for it’s thickness and the way it acts when it is chilled. But, you can totally try a substitute and let me know how it goes, I just can’t vouch for it being as how I haven’t tried it myself. My guess is that it will be thinner than my original recipe.

I made this in my blender, as I don’t own a food processor – worked like a charm!! I used almond milk & organic honey… that’s what was on hand. It’s a bit runny-er than store bought Nutella, so I simply store it in the fridge. Still is a great spread, thanks again for the recipe 😀

Playing around in the kitchen today. Made this #grainfree #glutenfree trashed up version of @brewinghappines ‘s Pumpkin Chia Olive Oil Cake. I’m not mad at it. 👌🏻 @ Novato, California https://t.co/2gyTjYK1gg